Technology Lab —

The Windows 8 productivity apps get more productive

Microsoft gives Mail, Calendar, and Contacts their first feature update.

When we first looked at the Mail, Calendar, and Contacts apps that ship with Windows 8, we found them more than a little barebones, with a frustrating lack of integration between them and features that compared unfavorably even with smartphone software.

That trio of apps is taking its first step forward with an update that will become available this evening or tomorrow morning.

Mail is the app that has seen the most work, and it has become a lot more capable, with a list of new features that highlights just how simple the original version was. The original client, for example, could show folders, but it didn't allow them to be created, renamed, or deleted. The new one does. The old version didn't support server-side searching. The new one does. The old one didn't even allow messages to be marked as junk. The new one does.

A number of improvements make it easier to view the mail you care about. The client now supports flagging messages and lets you filter to see only those messages that you've flagged. You can also filter to display only unread mail. There are folder-wide options to let you delete and mark every item in a folder as read with a couple of clicks or taps of the finger. Draft messages are also easier to use; similar to Outlook 2013 and Gmail, they're now listed in the inbox, associated with the e-mail thread that they're part of.

Filter to show only unread mail.

Microsoft

Message editing has also seen some improvements, with hyperlink editing, simpler editing of bulleted and numbered lists, and greater fidelity when pasting formatted content.

Contact management from within Mail has also been improved. Previously, there was no good way to convert the sender of an e-mail into a contact. Now there is. Further, the Mail app now knows which contacts you regularly communicate with and will make their names pop up near the "To:" field so they can be selected with a single tap.

Microsoft says that syncing with servers will be faster, and the Mail app now supports some extra Exchange features. Specifically, it has some support for Integrated Rights Management (IRM) and can be used to send e-mail with restrictions such as blocking forwarding and copying, or limiting distribution to particular users.

The Calendar app has had its main calendar views tidied up a little, with a number of visual changes. In the old version of the app, meetings showed up as blocks of color in the calendar; now the meeting blocks are white, with just a colored stripe down one side. A special area has been added for all-day events. There's a new working week view, which shows five days, and a line to indicate the current time.

Calendar's new Work Week view.

Microsoft

Calendar now uses Scheduling Assistant when connected to an Exchange server, and in a further piece of improved integration, it can now send e-mail to all a meeting's attendees.

The People app has seen the fewest changes. Navigation between your profile and other people's profiles has been made a little easier with some new app bar commands, and you can now use it to write on Facebook walls.

Finally, the apps are all meant to be a bit faster, though we don't know how much difference this will make in practice.

Microsoft still has a way to go with these apps. They're still less functional than the company's old desktop Windows Live Mail app, which remains troubling, because they provide such core functionality. However, this update is clearly a step in the right direction. The apps are becoming more useful and better rounded. They're no longer the glaring weaknesses that the original apps were, but Microsoft still has work to do to turn them into something that's best in class.

I still don't understand why the Metro versions of the apps use a different data store to the desktop versions.

It would almost seem a no-brainer to me that you can use the Metro mail app, switch to the desktop and then fire up the standard Mail client and get exactly the same setup.

It's probably one of the few reasons why mashing a tablet UI and a desktop UI together would make sense. You can easily switch from one to the other depending on how you are using the product - but, sadly, Microsoft seem to have missed that opportunity.

In mail clients the most important view you need is one that shows both unread and flagged messages, and nothing else. Because this means then you can read your new mail and either do something about it right away (answer it, delete it, whatever) or flag it for later. And you never need to care for all the cruft that gathers in your inbox because you hardly ever have to go into it to begin with.

But no, everyone offers filters to show only unread messages, or flagged ones, or all. It's almost as if email was invented only yesterday.

Are there any plans to add support to CalDAV and CardDAV? I know this is a feature that will roll out to WIndows 8 phones, but for people using Gmail it would be nice to sync that data on the desktop.

My understanding is no. Google is shutting down CalDAV in favor of the new Google Calendar API. So it puts Microsoft in a bad position. Maybe I am not fully understanding the importance of the CalDAV shutdown. Anyone have a better understanding?

or is Google just shutting down a certain version of CalDAV ? I am not a developer so I must admit I dont grasp the implications.

Are there any plans to add support to CalDAV and CardDAV? I know this is a feature that will roll out to WIndows 8 phones, but for people using Gmail it would be nice to sync that data on the desktop.

My understanding is no. Google is shutting down CalDAV in favor of the new Google Calendar API. So it puts Microsoft in a bad position. Maybe I am not fully understanding the importance of the CalDAV shutdown. Anyone have a better understanding?

or is Google just shutting down a certain version of CalDAV ? I am not a developer so I must admit I dont grasp the implications.

You'll need to be whitelisted (as a developer) to access Google calendars via CalDAV from your app. Basically you have to explain to them why the Google Calendar API doesn't work for your app and have to beg them to allow CalDAV for your app. Which of course totally perverts using an open standard like CalDAV in the first place, but Google has become powerful enough to do that and so they do it.

Meh, at this point I think I'm just gonna say forget and get the Outlook 2013 that came with my university office 365 sub to play nice with my 5 email accounts (3 personal, one .edu and work exchange). That should get all of my calendars and mail to all cooperate together.

As someone who has wasted literally several man-years sitting at various office desks, wrestling with Microsoft's awful development platforms, or attempting to maintain compatibility with their dreadful consumer products, the day I voluntarily purchase a device to carry around with me, and organise my life, that uses their software, is the day hell freezes over.

I recall this being a limitation when helping my uncle set up his machine and the workaround was to use "people" via outlook.com. He was trying to delete multiple contacts at the same time. The web app was more powerful than the client. Ouch.

I recall this being a limitation when helping my uncle set up his machine and the workaround was to use "people" via outlook.com. He was trying to delete multiple contacts at the same time. The web app was more powerful than the client. Ouch.

As someone who's been using the two for a whlie now and prepping to migrate their parents from the olden days to ultra-modern Outlook.com and the Win 8 Mail client, there is little doubt that the web app is far more powerful than the client is.

Are there any plans to add support to CalDAV and CardDAV? I know this is a feature that will roll out to WIndows 8 phones, but for people using Gmail it would be nice to sync that data on the desktop.

Google will stop supporting CalDAV in six months anyway. Well, at least for new apps.

Really? I thought that was going to be their big push after ending Exchange support for free users. Do they have any sort of contingency or is it going to be "use the web interface?"

It WAS going to be their big push, because it got the entire open source crowd onto their bandwagon when they dumped EAS. Then they killed CalDAV only like 3 months later on the same day as they killed Google Reader. It was a brilliant piece of work really because it got zero press compared to the killing of Reader.

Hm. I use outlook or the outlook.com web interface. Outlook is as good as free for me and it has the big advantage of not forcing policies on my pc that the Mail App does for Exchange accounts. And I rather like Outlook.

Good thing there's still no POP3 support. POP3 should simply go away for general email use.

I still don't understand why the Metro versions of the apps use a different data store to the desktop versions.

It would almost seem a no-brainer to me that you can use the Metro mail app, switch to the desktop and then fire up the standard Mail client and get exactly the same setup.

It's probably one of the few reasons why mashing a tablet UI and a desktop UI together would make sense. You can easily switch from one to the other depending on how you are using the product - but, sadly, Microsoft seem to have missed that opportunity.

A design decisions of "Metro" is that each app is in its own sandbox where it cannot do anything to the OS or any other apps. This means no sharing data except through Metro approved APIs, which the desktop apps don't have. And because the Metro app is sandboxed also for storage, the desktop version cannot see the Metro version and the Metro version can't see the desktop version.

A trade-off between convenience and security.

A work around would be to have a service that runs locally on TCP/IP/whatever, and allows the desktop and Metro version to share the settings or keep the desktop version running and let the Metro version connect over the network to it.

I have WinRT and Calendar seems to only sync the main calendar in Google Calendar. It would be helpful for it to sync all calendars and view them in their respective colors. Of course, MS won't help a competitor and Google has stated that it won't launch Win8 apps. So for now I'm sticking to the web-based Google services through desktop IE and it doesn't sound like it'll yet be worth to give the Win8 productivity apps another shot.

As a design analyst for an enterprise, these apps are absolutely useless and I have to remove them from any Windows 8 image I build. Why? Because the inbox apps cannot be updated by any enterprise deployment or patching system (for instance SCCM, Tivoli, etc.). The only way you can update the inbox Metro apps is to give all of your users a Microsoft account and have them update from the MS Windows Store. I haven't even bothered to check to see if they need Admin rights to do the update (my suspicion is no, but the apps will not update for "all users" only for themselves without such rights). Enterprise editions do get the ability to sideload in house written Metro apps - but the inbox ones can only update through the store. If they have a security vulnerability? Tough. So you end up stuck on the RTM build of these apps - which have been updated at least twice now. Most of them also don't work through an authenticated proxy server. I just have to remove the darn things.

To me they don't look like they're getting anywhere near productive enough for me to be productive though... Thank god for the Office team and the Outlook.com team. I think I can be more productive with Outlook Express 6.0 than the new and improved Mail + Calendar + People apps...

Part of me says it's to make the tablet side of things, more specifically fat fingers, easier to deal with. The other side says it's an attempt to keep people from realizing all the wasted real-estate on a modern widescreen laptop and/or desktop.

Does it fix the bug in Mail where I have a phantom unread email in one (but not the other) Gmail account?

I thought I had a similar issue - but it was actually an unread email nested away inside one of the threaded emails. The particular colour choice I was using had poor contrast between read and unread messages, so I had to open all the nests to find it.

I still don't understand why the Metro versions of the apps use a different data store to the desktop versions.

It would almost seem a no-brainer to me that you can use the Metro mail app, switch to the desktop and then fire up the standard Mail client and get exactly the same setup.

It's probably one of the few reasons why mashing a tablet UI and a desktop UI together would make sense. You can easily switch from one to the other depending on how you are using the product - but, sadly, Microsoft seem to have missed that opportunity.

A design decisions of "Metro" is that each app is in its own sandbox where it cannot do anything to the OS or any other apps. This means no sharing data except through Metro approved APIs, which the desktop apps don't have. And because the Metro app is sandboxed also for storage, the desktop version cannot see the Metro version and the Metro version can't see the desktop version.

A trade-off between convenience and security.

A work around would be to have a service that runs locally on TCP/IP/whatever, and allows the desktop and Metro version to share the settings or keep the desktop version running and let the Metro version connect over the network to it.

Work-arounds, but not pretty.

Negative. Metro intentionally blocks localhost sockets and all other forms of IPC between Metro and Desktop apps on the same machine. There have been a few really bad hacks found that sort of work, but they don't pass Store certification.

Releasing an OS/apps before they are ready for prime time. So typically Microsoft. Still. Been doing that for decades.

Pardon, while they have done it for quite a while, it took everyone else adopting the same stream-of-dev-consciousness model (Agile, amongst many others) to get us to this place. Like Google? Linux? Ya know, the big kahunas?

If the method produces defective products, in the view of the actual customers, change the friggin' model!